thoughts in and out of season
Hate-filled bigots have been stopped dead in their tracks: an organization had been sending families of fallen soldiers and policemen medallions with a picture of the Liberty Bell and the quotations “Liberty Rings For All Nations” and “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.” On the reverse they had been putting the man’s name and the … More ...
The New York Times reports in a news story that William F. Buckley Jr. is divesting himself of control and ownership of “National Review,” the journal he founded 49 years ago. WFB was never a culture warrior, and these days, he’s not much of a warrior of any kind. Of course, at the age of … More ...
The claim that the history of Europe from 1517 to 1648 shows that mixing politics and religion leads to endless violence, so that peace requires the secular state, always seemed odd to me. After all, states kill by nature, and they can be defended only if someone is willing to put his life on the … More ...
British law, like U.S. law. requires the physical reconstruction of the universe so handicaps are no longer handicaps. Failure to do the necessary reconstruction is strictly forbidden as a violation of fundamental human decency. That’s what laws against “discrimination” on the basis of disability are all about.
Such laws are yet another glorious social … More ...
I don’t expect to have reliable web access for the next few days (probably until Tuesday) and so may not post at all. Remember, though, that any registered user can start a new forum topic!
Keeping abreast of the times:
I’ve argued that contemporary liberalism is the flowering and not the corruption of classical liberalism. Once people accept the primacy of freedom, the basic principle of classical liberalism, what we have now naturally follows.
How far can that line of thought be taken? Liberalism, with its emphasis on the freedom and dignity of the individual, … More ...
Do vote, and remember that old polls are still available (see site links above).
A review of Diane Ravitch’s The Language Police in The New Pantagruel brings out the nature of “celebrating diversity” in school textbooks: since almost anything one might assert, suggest or mention would be more favorable to one group or culture than another, the only things that can be asserted, suggested or mentioned are things like … More ...
We live in a time in which an abstract and basic question like that is relevant to practical political life. Judges today, for example, feel free to overthrow the established definition of marriage on the grounds that the universal understanding of a fundamental social institution is simply irrational. What is accepted as “reasonable” has evidently … More ...